As usual, you do a great job blending the subtleties of inner experience with the lived realities of the external. I appreciate how you broke down the intricate web of relations comprising a thanksgiving spread...there is something so powerful about opening up to that kind of relational vision. I like to do it whenever it occurs to me (hopefully more and more often) because even sitting here in my bedroom looking at everything, its as if the entire earth is here with me through the connection of all the elements and relationships.
As I have been musing on this piece, the thing that keeps coming up for me is awareness. Everything that you spoke about that feels good and fulfilling to you (to me as well) in the way you weave your relational economy, and the way you imagine that it could be - I think - comes down to awareness. We have to know, moreover feel, why we would even want the quality of our exchange to be as you promote, in order for it to be something that we reach for and seek. We know that we cannot force awareness on anyone else, or really even assume that our awareness is appropriate/correct/beneficial for them (even if I would like to think it is!)...but we can act from the inspiration that flows from the level of awareness that feels the best and the most expansive to us as individuals. And then link up with other like minds. Which is of course what you are doing with the food hub and soil amendment group.
In the last decade, my extended family who gathers together for the thanksgiving holiday has moved away from prayer, etc. at the beginning of the meal - but this year I'd like to offer a brief meditation, inspired by your essay, offering everyone a chance to see more deeply into the inherent collaboration, reciprocity, and earthly origin of everything on the table. Whether or not it resonates deeply with others, I know for myself that the most important thing is that I keep opening my awareness in the direction that feels the best for me - so that I continue to find what I am looking for, and join my energy together with others who care and feel similarly. We are reflective creatures, always mirroring to each other. Deep down, pretty much everyone wants to have a good time, wants to feel good, wants to thrive, and feel their connection with life...if we can embody it, we offer that up to the whole in a powerful way.
Decommodifying our minds - oof, and yes. Navigating how participate in economy, what economy actually means to us. And again, I come back to asking myself "what feels best" - this always seems to lead me into the "relational reverence" as you call it.
So much here, as usual Markael. Great piece, so much food for thought (literally)
I am honored that my essay will inspire a Thanksgiving meditation. I will have to see if I can do the same - I will be with a largely new group of people this year so I may not have the opportunity.
I am not sure how best to approach the most complex of our creations - smartphones, computers, vehicles, airplanes - whose supply chains branch in a thousand fractal directions. On the one hand, this is an amazing example of interdependence - the whole Earth here with us, as you say. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent this sort of complexity is dependent on a transactional, commodified, hierarchical economy. Would we, could we still build them in a world of relational reverence? What does reciprocity look like at the scale of airports and electronics manufacturing? Perhaps it is possible, or perhaps if we collectively move toward relationality we will - like the Amish - choose less complexity and technology in our lives. Perhaps it will be a blend of both.
Awareness - yes. Or actually as I consider it maybe three things. Space, and awareness, and something deeper - feeling, wholeness, interbeing. So many people simply don't have space. Their minds and lives are full. My brother's family is so enmeshed in extracurriculars and hockey and shuttling four kids that they hardly have time to eat let alone consider where their food comes from. That is a choice, of course, and one that I find difficult to understand from within myself. But many folks seem to be afraid to have time alone with their thoughts, and will do anything to keep themselves occupied or distracted. Or they are driven by some obsession or ideal or intense focus that guides their choices and limits their field of view. Not to say that's a problem, exactly - I don't wish to judge people - although it is a barrier to moving toward relational reverence collectively. To be able expand our awareness we first need to hold space within ourselves, as you wrote so beautifully a few days ago.
And then awareness has different levels. We can research supply chains and know at the level of our minds where our food and products come from. And then we can apply our morality and values and anxieties to choose to eat vegan, or buy organic or fair trade or GMO-free or local. We are aware, in a sense, but that doesn't yet lead to relational reverence. We still need to feel, within ourselves, a deeper sense of interbeing, of interconnectedness, of wholeness. And this is not at all a mind thing, at least for me. And then the awareness or understanding plus that deeper feeling moves us toward relational reverence, toward mirroring in our outward lives what we feel and know within, resolving dissonant detachment into resonant embodiment.
Thank you again for adding your perspectives and leading me in new directions in this collaborative unfolding.
Thank you Mark for your relational heart noticing so much more than we are conditioned to notice when we shop or choose what we bring into our lives and homes. I will be making more new relationally acknowledged choices going forward.🥰
If you have not read 'Sand Talk', the theme here is found all over that book. I suspect some of the 'yarns' within would resonate with you quite very well....
I have shot the shit, shaken the hand, and looked in the eye the man that raises the beef we eat. I have visited the farm... I have heard his story about how the vet came to look at one of his sick animals and says 'mmm, nothing wrong'. 'But you can see she is suffering, something is wrong!'. You could tell that tho he clearly very much enjoyed the ritual of chatting with the folk buying his wares at the farmers market, telling them the secret to his enormous and very delicious root veggies (cow shit).... on that day he'd much rather be home tending to that cow....
So I have a pretty good notion of how he treats the animals under his care, and as his son is going to raise beef cattle this son has decided. This man (Ron) is going to be teaching that care to his son, and who knows just how far that relationship will continue to reciprocate thru time and generations, and this sort of skill, care and attention.... I have this feeling is going to become more and more important to the resiliency of local food systems as things continue to 'progress' as they have been steadily doing for perhaps a little bit overlong now...
I know what a great privilege it is to live as a couple of DINKS in a city where I can ride my bike easily to any of four locations farmer's markets are held... but most of these farmers have a 'market day' in their local communities as well, as people are def starting to remember what real vegetables and properly raised meat and eggs taste like, seem perhaps more 'real', nutritious, as well, so there is something more than the stories that recall the relationships of which they are made (I got this on aisle six just doesn't make much of story does it?).
Anyway, read that book, hopefully you love it is much as I did.
Edit: Like when I buy 'Jane's Honey' at the market, the woman selling happens to go by the name of 'Jane'. This just makes sense, but it is a good story too...
Thank you for sharing this insightful piece. It is a really beautiful reminder to see the infinite complexity in everything and everyone around us... I think this type of thinking is so needed in our day and age of distraction and consumption and commodification. More complexity, richness, and understanding...
Thank you for this Mark. It's been quite awhile now since an essay brought tears of inspiration to this crumudgeons' eye. You speak truth to my experience as a market gardener. So much transaction, so little relation.
On a practical note, how can I connect with your ammendments group?
As usual, you do a great job blending the subtleties of inner experience with the lived realities of the external. I appreciate how you broke down the intricate web of relations comprising a thanksgiving spread...there is something so powerful about opening up to that kind of relational vision. I like to do it whenever it occurs to me (hopefully more and more often) because even sitting here in my bedroom looking at everything, its as if the entire earth is here with me through the connection of all the elements and relationships.
As I have been musing on this piece, the thing that keeps coming up for me is awareness. Everything that you spoke about that feels good and fulfilling to you (to me as well) in the way you weave your relational economy, and the way you imagine that it could be - I think - comes down to awareness. We have to know, moreover feel, why we would even want the quality of our exchange to be as you promote, in order for it to be something that we reach for and seek. We know that we cannot force awareness on anyone else, or really even assume that our awareness is appropriate/correct/beneficial for them (even if I would like to think it is!)...but we can act from the inspiration that flows from the level of awareness that feels the best and the most expansive to us as individuals. And then link up with other like minds. Which is of course what you are doing with the food hub and soil amendment group.
In the last decade, my extended family who gathers together for the thanksgiving holiday has moved away from prayer, etc. at the beginning of the meal - but this year I'd like to offer a brief meditation, inspired by your essay, offering everyone a chance to see more deeply into the inherent collaboration, reciprocity, and earthly origin of everything on the table. Whether or not it resonates deeply with others, I know for myself that the most important thing is that I keep opening my awareness in the direction that feels the best for me - so that I continue to find what I am looking for, and join my energy together with others who care and feel similarly. We are reflective creatures, always mirroring to each other. Deep down, pretty much everyone wants to have a good time, wants to feel good, wants to thrive, and feel their connection with life...if we can embody it, we offer that up to the whole in a powerful way.
Decommodifying our minds - oof, and yes. Navigating how participate in economy, what economy actually means to us. And again, I come back to asking myself "what feels best" - this always seems to lead me into the "relational reverence" as you call it.
So much here, as usual Markael. Great piece, so much food for thought (literally)
I am honored that my essay will inspire a Thanksgiving meditation. I will have to see if I can do the same - I will be with a largely new group of people this year so I may not have the opportunity.
I am not sure how best to approach the most complex of our creations - smartphones, computers, vehicles, airplanes - whose supply chains branch in a thousand fractal directions. On the one hand, this is an amazing example of interdependence - the whole Earth here with us, as you say. On the other hand, I wonder to what extent this sort of complexity is dependent on a transactional, commodified, hierarchical economy. Would we, could we still build them in a world of relational reverence? What does reciprocity look like at the scale of airports and electronics manufacturing? Perhaps it is possible, or perhaps if we collectively move toward relationality we will - like the Amish - choose less complexity and technology in our lives. Perhaps it will be a blend of both.
Awareness - yes. Or actually as I consider it maybe three things. Space, and awareness, and something deeper - feeling, wholeness, interbeing. So many people simply don't have space. Their minds and lives are full. My brother's family is so enmeshed in extracurriculars and hockey and shuttling four kids that they hardly have time to eat let alone consider where their food comes from. That is a choice, of course, and one that I find difficult to understand from within myself. But many folks seem to be afraid to have time alone with their thoughts, and will do anything to keep themselves occupied or distracted. Or they are driven by some obsession or ideal or intense focus that guides their choices and limits their field of view. Not to say that's a problem, exactly - I don't wish to judge people - although it is a barrier to moving toward relational reverence collectively. To be able expand our awareness we first need to hold space within ourselves, as you wrote so beautifully a few days ago.
And then awareness has different levels. We can research supply chains and know at the level of our minds where our food and products come from. And then we can apply our morality and values and anxieties to choose to eat vegan, or buy organic or fair trade or GMO-free or local. We are aware, in a sense, but that doesn't yet lead to relational reverence. We still need to feel, within ourselves, a deeper sense of interbeing, of interconnectedness, of wholeness. And this is not at all a mind thing, at least for me. And then the awareness or understanding plus that deeper feeling moves us toward relational reverence, toward mirroring in our outward lives what we feel and know within, resolving dissonant detachment into resonant embodiment.
Thank you again for adding your perspectives and leading me in new directions in this collaborative unfolding.
Thank you Mark for your relational heart noticing so much more than we are conditioned to notice when we shop or choose what we bring into our lives and homes. I will be making more new relationally acknowledged choices going forward.🥰
If you have not read 'Sand Talk', the theme here is found all over that book. I suspect some of the 'yarns' within would resonate with you quite very well....
I have shot the shit, shaken the hand, and looked in the eye the man that raises the beef we eat. I have visited the farm... I have heard his story about how the vet came to look at one of his sick animals and says 'mmm, nothing wrong'. 'But you can see she is suffering, something is wrong!'. You could tell that tho he clearly very much enjoyed the ritual of chatting with the folk buying his wares at the farmers market, telling them the secret to his enormous and very delicious root veggies (cow shit).... on that day he'd much rather be home tending to that cow....
So I have a pretty good notion of how he treats the animals under his care, and as his son is going to raise beef cattle this son has decided. This man (Ron) is going to be teaching that care to his son, and who knows just how far that relationship will continue to reciprocate thru time and generations, and this sort of skill, care and attention.... I have this feeling is going to become more and more important to the resiliency of local food systems as things continue to 'progress' as they have been steadily doing for perhaps a little bit overlong now...
I know what a great privilege it is to live as a couple of DINKS in a city where I can ride my bike easily to any of four locations farmer's markets are held... but most of these farmers have a 'market day' in their local communities as well, as people are def starting to remember what real vegetables and properly raised meat and eggs taste like, seem perhaps more 'real', nutritious, as well, so there is something more than the stories that recall the relationships of which they are made (I got this on aisle six just doesn't make much of story does it?).
Anyway, read that book, hopefully you love it is much as I did.
Edit: Like when I buy 'Jane's Honey' at the market, the woman selling happens to go by the name of 'Jane'. This just makes sense, but it is a good story too...
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out!
Thank you for sharing this insightful piece. It is a really beautiful reminder to see the infinite complexity in everything and everyone around us... I think this type of thinking is so needed in our day and age of distraction and consumption and commodification. More complexity, richness, and understanding...
Thank you Eden!
Thank you for this Mark. It's been quite awhile now since an essay brought tears of inspiration to this crumudgeons' eye. You speak truth to my experience as a market gardener. So much transaction, so little relation.
On a practical note, how can I connect with your ammendments group?
Thanks Gawain!
If you're local to the Willamette Valley, send an email to mark@tenriversfoodweb.org and I'll send you details.